Judith Chalmer
Judith Chalmer (born November 4, 1951) is an American poet. Life Family Chalmer was born on November 4, 1951 in Buffalo, New York. Her maternal grandparents came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Her mother was born in New York City and grew up in Greenwich Village in the 1920s.Davar, 2005. Her father grew up in Germany. In 1938, the day after Kristallnacht, the Nazis imprisoned her father in Dachau. Fortunately he was released and immediately immigrated to the United States. When World War II began he enlisted in the army, and ironically was posted to Germany. After the war he was able to find his mother and sister who had survived the Holocaust. Judith's father died when she was a year old. Youth, education, marriage Judith grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Buffalo and attended a reform temple. She attemded the University of Toronto, where she met and married Bruce Chalmer. After a summer hiking in Vermont, they settled there and Judith finished her undergraduate degree at Goddard College. She and Bruce had three sons, now grown. The couple later divorced. Adult life In the late 1990s, Judith traveled to Amsterdam to meet Emma Poldervaart, who had helped the Chalmer family hide during the war. Thanks to Judith's efforts Emma has been honored with the designation 'righteous gentile' and her story is preserved at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial. After taking a poetry workshop Judith said, "I'm going to confront this Holocaust history in the family." The result was a book of poetry, Out of History's Junk Jar: Poems of a Mixed Inheritance, published in 1995 by Time Being Books. Judith's family story inspired her to collect oral histories from immigrants and refugees in central Vermont. A grant from the state Arts Council in 1999 helped her write and produce a program of music, readings and dance at City Hall in Montpelier. Judith celebrated her marriage to Lisa Gibbons in September, 2009. Today Judith is the executive director of VSA Arts of Vermont, a nonprofit group whose mission is to make the arts accessible to people of all abilities through music, dance, drama and the visual arts. Chalmers is Executive Director of VSA Arts Vermont, a nonprofit devoted to arts and disability inclusion. She is the creator of a dance/narrative with oral histories, "Clearing Customs/ Cruzando Fronteras/ Preselenje," on the lives of immigrants in central Vermont (1999), and author and performer of "Don't Go in There!" a 1-woman comedy on racial and ethnic consciousness in central Vermont (2002).Judith Chalmer, Time Being Books. Web, Sep. 3, 2018. Chalmer's poems have appeared in more than 25 literary journals and anthologies. Her essays have appeared in anthologies such as Under Her Skin: How girls experience race in America, Urban Spaghetti, and Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women: Patterns in a feminist sampler. Recognition Her poems have won 1st prize in the New England Writers' Association Annual Poetry Prize and honorable mention from the Pushcart Poetry Prize. See also *List of U.S. poets References *Davar: The Vermont Jewish women's history, "Judith Chalmer €“3-November-2005," To Life! A celebration of Vermont Jewish women. Internet Archive, Web, Sep. 3, 2018. Notes External links ;Poems *Judith Chalmer 4 poems at Leaping Clear ;Audio / video *Judith Chalmer interview by Davar, 2005 ;Books *''Out of History's Junk Jar'' at Amazon.com ;About *Judith Chalmer at Time Being Books ''This article uses Creative Commons-licensed text from Davar: The Vermont Jewish women's history. Original article is at "Judith Chalmer" '' Category:20th-century poets Category:20th-century women writers Category:American poets Category:American women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Women poets Category:1951 births Category:People from Buffalo, New York